*As I write this I am watching, as we all are, what looks like John Podesta saying, "Don't worry, we're going to sneakily fix this huge mistake you idiots are making right now." I hate to say it, but that part of me that feels like this has to be a nightmare and I'll wake up any second, really wishes those sneaky bastards could do something, but of course that's just the bargaining stage. If this really is legitimate then we have to just accept that we are broken, and try to find ways to fix it. This is not who America really is, is it? This is who you think should run the country? Are you going to be able to look at your children and your students and your colleagues tomorrow morning and be okay with this? I am not. But, back to why humanity just lost.
Do you believe there is a Caucasian man sitting on a cloud right now, deciding what happens in your day-to-day life? Do you blame him, literally or thank him for things you really think he had a hand in? For example, maybe he kept your cat safe in a hurricane once, the same hurricane that has nothing to do with climate change because that's just a silly hoax, right? Or perhaps God was punishing someone with the hurricane, I'm not sure how you wrap your brain around your varying ideas about the weather. Or, about everything else. Many of you who are pro-life, which was why you had to vote for Trump. He was the only hope for you to be able to control the bodies and lives of other human beings because the man in your head told you to carry that torch all the way. But we all know you are not pro-life once that child leaves the womb. You don't care how much it costs the parent to deliver the child, how long they get to spend with the child after it is born, what kind of shit school it goes to or what it doesn't learn, what kind of chemicals it ingests, what mental trauma it goes through fighting the wars you create, you don't care about life like that. You don't want to help the child get an education, you'd like to keep it poor, sick, and needy, keep it down with loans and minimum wage jobs and fear until it gets sick at the factory it works in, the one that has no regulations, and then it ends up on the streets, where you blame it for begging and tell it to get a job. And you think this is the solution to your problems? Donald J. Trump? You think he cares about you? Or about your God? You think he will do a good job with this? We really need to get smarter, people.
I have been listening to both CNN and The Young Turks back and forth all evening,"the woman card" was brushed off when it was mentioned, which was not very often. I've been hearing a lot of mindless babbling and back-peddling, but I didn't hear it coming to the forefront until much later, when it was dismissed conveniently by a woman. White, racist, homophobic, misogynistic men are going to be so inflated now, so I hope those men who aren't will not stand by while others consider Trump to be the role model we expect a president will be. We tell our children they can strive for this position, and now it is being made a complete mockery of because of our collective apathy, stupidity, or our place in a system that has been set up to disadvantage us, as it will be reconfigured now. We're going to have to work so much harder if we don't want this to swallow us whole. I can't help but think of all of the Brock Turners of the world who see this as a victory. They're hearing, don't worry, it's going to be a boy's club again. A rich boy's club where women are good girls who look pretty and stay thin and don't threaten their power.
One way for us to wake up would be to confront the idea that maybe there isn't a booming creator who appears on toast with a set of invisible rules, makes sure we don't get any ideas about anyone else also having a similar story, and gets tangled with our politics because it's all about how to rise in power, right? We all want the underdog story, except when that underdog id begging on the streets. We need to care more about reality, not just reality television. We would use science to our benefit, and to the benefit of the planet. We need to start caring more about science than we do religion. Faith without regard to science leads to ideas like, some of our lives might matter less, or that women really are just bodies for your enjoyment, created conveniently right out of a man's ribcage. If you can practice your faith in a way that benefits humanity, doesn't encourage greed and the size of men's egos, or of course hands, and otherwise leaves the rest of us and our laws out of it, then great. But I believe that the reason this country has done what it's done, which is to elect a racist, misogynist, narcissistic, pathological, erratic, man-child into the highest office in the land, is because half of the people in our country have their eyes closed. They can be wooed by this caricature, because they never have to think. I'm talking about people who believe that they don't have to take care of this world because Jesus can just take the wheel. We've become a country full of people who do not believe in facts, as if they are something we can blow away as easily as smoke, or the air from our new buffoon president's mouth. Religion is just one part of the puzzle, but confronting our reliance on it and our use of it to justify such catastrophic collective decisions like tonights, one nation under God and clearly divisible.
We need to come together for a reason outside of our faiths. How about just as rational, compassionate, human beings. Can we start communicating together more effectively, start disagreeing out loud, start being more compassionate and thoughtful, can we stick up for strangers, advocate for nonviolence, try to be calm, but also stop the acting, expose where the money goes, and find out how to really make a difference. Maybe that means people try to get into politics so that they don't have to say it all sucks, and all the people involved are liars, because they'll be the one involved. The good side needs to fight harder now, somehow. We can't just all flee to Canada, because this goes beyond our borders. We all have to care a bit more, and communicate more. We have to stop being afraid of each other for the color of our skin, our accents, or identities. I hope we can use our collective shock and awe over this to fight harder. I'm listening to Anderson Cooper right now for example, sounding like he's about to say, "Come on, idiots! We need to freak out about this!" But so far they just keep talking in circles, saying nothing. I won't ask how they are going to sleep tonight, because I know not many of us can.
This is our new reality. Women now have to look at the man drinking the Mt. Dew outside the Walmart and wonder if now he actually will try to grab our bodies, when yesterday he may have just slurred his plans for them while he grabbed his own, and the morons in the parking lot will just honk their horns at him in solidarity. He'll tell you his favorite book is the Bible, because it's all he's ever read. No, I take that back, he never read the Bible either, but he believes every word it says. Don't ask him to read it out loud though, because I bet he stumbles on every word and just gets angry and refuses to continue, spitting in the dirt like a child and saying, Go ahead, do it, pull on my hair. It's real! Or, when you're famous they let you do anything. America really is a narcissistic bully, turns out. He helped to make us stupid enough to let this happen, and now he is our leader and republicans have full control. They are having the time of their lives right now. I'm terrified for so many people who are not safe right now. We are vulnerable to all kinds of attacks, both personally, as a country, and as a species. I mean, the way they were talking on CNN before I had to shut it down sounded like Putin was standing behind the camera with Bernie and Clinton tied up next to him. Is this all really happening, America?
We need to become smarter as a nation, which is going to be an even more daunting task now. If you are one of those people who believes God has a plan for every single one of us on this tiny speck of a planet, (and apparently he wants to make sure everyone in America is aware that if you're gay or black or menstruating you're disgusting) then you better help him out, because we're really running this place into the ground if we go this way. Imagine God gave humans the management job and we just hired the absolute WORST person to run things. So we messed up. Maybe if you didn't take the story so literally, and thought for yourself it wouldn't lead to such consequences.
This is the planet we have evolved to live on, and have destroyed to the point where soon we will not be able to inhabit it in the same way, if at all. But that doesn't bother any of you who didn't vote Hillary Clinton when it came right down to the wire, does it? When it was just you and God in that booth? He wasn't with me and I still managed to vote for Clinton even though I held out hope for a long time that Sanders would make it through. Well I hope those of us who are devastated tight now use this pain to really wake up. Our choices do have consequences. Our lack of education matters. As much as you believe it's true, you will not be saved by any glowing, feathery haired man. We have to all come to grips with that and start thinking more about each other down here on Earth. I hope those of us who read, and care about other human beings, and the state of this planet, will come together whether we wanted Bernie, or Hillary, or even good old Gary Johnson, and we can agree to disagree about some things for now, and work on the big stuff, whatever that will be in the coming days, weeks, and years. Can we start telling the truth? Can we stand up for what we believe is right in our hearts, without religion or bigots or obstructionists stopping us?
Show yourselves, smart people who can help us get money out of politics before it gets worse. Help keep our at-risk populations safe. Help take us off of this road to a climate we cannot survive in. How many more species of animals and plants are we going to take out? We can't let republicans roll back our progress on climate change for short term financial gains. How long will we have clean drinking water? Those of us who are appalled by this need to speak out while we have the chance. We say hindsight is 20/20. And we will have a lot of looking back to do to make a plan for the future, but maybe it doesn't have to be so bleak. Maybe in 2020 (if something doesn't dramatically shift before then) we will be able to count on the kind of energy that we saw throughout this campaign for someone like Bernie Sanders, someone who showed us how much we do have in common. We have to make sure we don't let all of this beat us down and make us shout louder over each other, because look where that got us.
My heart is racing and my downstairs neighbors just turned their music up. They are cheering while the crowd is cheering for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, men who terrify me and should terrify any reasonable human who cares about anything more than money, power, and control. Anything like human rights, and not just the ones the NRA wants us to care about. This feels like incredibly terrible timing to undo everything we have worked so hard for. What kind of country is this going to be in 50 years for someone with a chronic illness, for a rape victim, for someone who is disabled? What about a young black male, minding his own business? This is serious. I'm so ashamed of this country and wish I could be baffled, but the republicans have been creating this for a long time. People have been watching television shows about people who have eighteen children because God says that's a great idea, so maybe that's why he has the numbers.
The decent people in this country need to start asking real questions and speaking honestly. Expose what's really happening. Reality television has desensitized us so much that we didn't imagine something like this could actually happen. I did feel like I was watching a reality show when he was giving his his speech, though, or listening to a bullshit car salesman.
Who is going to rescue us now that we've wound up here? I guess we will have to face the world in just a few hours in all of its hungover wretchedness. I'm still not sure how --
So please, decent humans of this world, don't let their voices drown yours out. I hear my neighbors whooping and drinking and it is hurting my chest. I feel like the stage is going to fall apart any minute behind this despicable man, who looks scared shitless by the way, as do all of these men trying to fill the time with their banter. We need to all admit that this is not a good thing for anybody, and try not to keep letting our differences divide us in this country. Maybe we all need to get more involved in politics to make it work the way it should, rather than doing what I'm doing and simply talking about it all the time. How can we really make people see that this could really be the beginning of the end if we become complacent now. Maybe more of us will become better advocates, louder voices, and more selfless human beings as a result of this insanity. My neighbors just turned their music up louder, and I've been considering banging on the floor in hopes they'll get the hint, but the confidence and boom of their laughter makes me a new kind of nervous, for all of us.